Wednesday, 22 February 2017

Even those sceptical
of Pakistan’s insistence that it is cracking down on jihadists of every hue are
now admitting that something has clearly changed from the days when only token
action would be taken against “India-focussed” groups.

On
Wednesday evening, the Pakistan Army announced it had launched Operation
Radd-ul-Fasaad across the country. This includes counter-terrorism operations,
aimed at “indiscriminately eliminating residual/latent threat of terrorism”.

On
Wednesday, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) chief, Hafiz Saeed, who has been railing at
his government for detaining him at “India’s behest”, challenged his January 30
detention in the Lahore High Court. In the past, the courts had supinely
ordered Saeed’s release --- as also that of his terrorist assistant,
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi who masterminded the 26/11 Mumbai strike.

This time,
however, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s federal government, Chief Minister
Shahbaz Sharif’s Punjab government and the army under General Qamar Bajwa clearly
coordinating closely, the High Court in Lahore could well display a stiffer
backbone when it hears Saeed’s appeal.

The army,
particularly, has been unequivocal in backing Saeed’s arrest. The day after it
happened, Pakistan’s military’s spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor stated:
“This (Saeed’s arrest) is a policy decision that the
state took in [the] national interest.” On Sunday, speaking at the Munich
Security Conference, Pakistani
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif termed Saeed a “serious threat to [Pakistani]
society” and said he had been arrested in Pakistan’s “larger interest”.

Numerous
theories are being advanced for Pakistan’s new resolve. These include pressure
from Beijing; and Islamabad’s worry of being punished by the new administration
of President Donald Trump. In fact, the primary driver of the drive against Pakistan’s
terrorist proxies is the new army chief, Bajwa.

As Business
Standard first reported (January 11, “Is Pak Army preparing to turn on LeT and
Jaish?”), Bajwa believes Pakistan’s national security interests lie in ending
the spiral of hostility with India. For that, he is ready to curb the LeT and
JeM, long coddled as “strategic assets” for proxy strikes against targets in
India.

Consequently,
not just does Saeed find himself in custody, his “humanitarian” fronts --
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falaha-e-Insaaniyat (FIF) ---too have been officially proscribed under the
2nd Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997.

This week,
the Pakistani government cancelled 44 weapons licences that had been granted to
Hafiz Saeed and his group members. Earlier, Saeed and 37 members of the JuD and
FIF were placed on an Exit Control List, requiring them to obtain special
government permission to travel out of Pakistan.

Tightening
the squeeze, the army is facilitating sweeps by the Punjab Police’s
counter-terrorism wing and the paramilitary Rangers across southern Punjab to
kill or arrest terrorists, especially from these groups.

These are
termed “intelligence based operations” (IBOs). According to Pakistan Army
sources, an IBO is typically based on specific information about jihadis from
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) or the police’s counter-terrorism wing.
It involves cordoning and searching a village or locality by mixed task forces,
with the Pakistan Army sometimes assisting in cordoning off the area, while the
Punjab Policy actual apprehends the terrorists.

The IBOs
are achieving notable results. On Friday, a day after a suicide bomber killed 72
worshippers and injured 150 in the popular Sufi shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (of
“Dama Dam Mast Qalandar” fame) in the Sindhi town of Sehwan Sharif, the army retaliated
by killing over a hundred terrorists in IBOs.

Now the
paramilitary Rangers will be joining this crackdown. On Wednesday, the federal
government approved the request from Punjab Chief Minister Shabaz Sharif, made
on Sunday, for 2,000 Rangers to beef up IBOs in Southern Punjab. Going back on
its traditional reluctance to grant police powers to a paramilitary
organisation, the Punjab government has granted the Rangers powers of search,
seizure and arrest.

The
Pakistan Rangers are more potent than the police, since they are officered by
the Pakistan Army. Responsible (like India’s Border Security Force) for manning
the Indo-Pakistan border, Indians know the Rangers as the troops who perform
the coordinated flag ceremony at the Wagah-Atari border near Amritsar.

Pakistan seeks
to tackle terrorism under the umbrella of a National Action Plan (NAP), which
was approved in an all-party meeting after the terror strike in December 2014,
when seven Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) gunmen killed 141 people in Army Public
School, Peshawar, including 132 schoolchildren.

Under the
NAP, former army chief, General Raheel Sharif, had selectively targeted
“anti-Pakistan” groups like the TTP, while protecting “strategic assets” like
the LeT and JeM, the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban.

Bajwa’s
unusual conviction on the need to stay out of politics also manifested in Nawaz
Sharif’s selection of Tehmina Janjua as foreign secretary, side-lining the
army’s choice, the current High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit. Janjua is
the junior-most of the Pakistan foreign ministry’s 13 apex rank (Grade 22)
officers, and has no experience in New Delhi. Yet, Bajwa quietly accepted
Nawaz’s choice.

Saturday, 18 February 2017

The government’s silence in the face of simmering anger in
Kashmir is throwing into dangerous confrontation two crucial protagonists ---
the army, versus unarmed Kashmiri civilian mobs.

The army, on the one hand, must intensify
counter-infiltration operations to keep militants at bay until snow closes
routes across the Line of Control (LoC). And with nothing to show for months of
violent street protests after the killing in July of popular local militant, Burhan
Wani, Kashmiri separatists have little choice but to up the ante, if necessary
by confronting the army directly.

On Wednesday, a day after four army men were killed and
several others injured in three encounters in North Kashmir, army chief,
General Bipin Rawat bluntly warned that stone-pelting Kashmiri mobs who
interfered in army operations would be fired upon.

Calling such mobs “over-ground workers of terrorists”, Rawat
also warned that civilians waving Pakistani or Islamic State (IS) flags would
be treated as “anti-nationals”.

These strong words had been carefully calibrated. The army,
highly experienced in counter-insurgency operations (COIN), faces a worrying
new challenge from flash mobs of Kashmiri civilians, who hurl stones at
soldiers moving to cordon a suspected militant hideout, or closing in for the
final engagement. This facilitates the militant’s getaway. Alternatively, like
on Tuesday, it distracts soldiers at a critical moment, causing additional
casualties.

Since insurgency broke out in the Kashmir Valley in 1990,
even through sustained spells of violent civilian protests, mobs had prudently
avoided direct confrontation with the army and its counter-militancy wing, the
Rashtriya Rifles.

Most seminal confrontations with civilians have involved the
“central armed police forces” (CAPFs), or the J&K Police (JKP). From the bloodbath
in Srinagar in May 1990, when some 50 Kashmiri mourners in Mirwaiz Mohammed
Farooq’s funeral procession were shot dead by a panic-stricken Central Reserve
Police Force (CRPF) detachment that feared it was being overwhelmed; to the
three summers of violent street protests across Kashmir in 2008, 2009 and 2010,
it was always CAPFs or JKP that came into direct confrontation with civilian
mobs.

Even through periods of extended bitterness, the army and
civilians extended unusual courtesies to each other. Army posts were seldom
directly targeted and army convoys moved with relative freedom.

There were two reasons for this. First, violent civilian
mobs were largely an urban phenomenon; and the police, not the army, controlled
the Valley’s big cities. Second, Kashmiri separatist leaders realised there
would be bloody costs to directly confronting the army, since that would be responded
to, not as civilian protest, but as a threat to the territorial integrity of
the Line of Control (LoC), which the army guarded.

Few Kashmiris would admit this, but there is a grudging public
respect of the army’s operational restraint and “winning hearts and minds”
campaigns that have materially uplifted living conditions in remote border
areas ignored by the state government.

This balance, however, began changing in 2014-15, when the
first civilian flash mobs appeared in rural South Kashmir and challenged
on-going army cordon-and-search operations. Inexorably, incidents grew of
unarmed locals pelting stones at armed soldiers in cordons and of interference
in actual firefights.

This mindset change across rural Kashmiris is blamed on two
reasons. Firstly, after the mass agitations of 2008-10, Kashmiris expected an
outreach from New Delhi, including a political dialogue. Not only did the
United Progressive Alliance betray that expectation but, since 2014, the National
Democratic Alliance government inflamed Kashmiri opinion with “anti-Muslim”
confrontations like the beef ban, the Dadri lynching and the “love jihad”
controversy. As bitterly resented were a series of local controversies,
internal to Kashmiri politics, that separatists presented as an assault on the
Kashmiri identity -- such as allegations that New Delhi was transforming the Valley’s
demographic profile by sponsoring “Pandit Colonies” and “Sainik Colonies”.

Further, Kashmiri youth were bitter at the abject failure of
armed militancy, with new militants often surviving less than a month in the
field before being gunned down by the security forces. The frenzy after the
gunning down of Burhan Wani last July, more a social media star than a dreaded
militant, reflected public bitterness at an underdog swallowed by the maws of a
pitiless security establishment. Many of those pelting stones at an army cordon
are driven by the frantic need to rescue a young man whom they know intimately.

The army, however, does a dangerous job, in which it already
imposes numerous restraints on itself to make COIN operations less hazardous to
the public --- such as abjuring the use of mortars, artillery, helicopters or air
power. Senior commanders realise that soldiers’ hands cannot be tied beyond a
point.

Hence General Rawat’s warning to civilians, which is not the
first. Last April, after a dozen soldiers were injured in stone pelting, the
army publicly warned it would use force against civilians breaking a cordon.
Earlier, two civilians were actually killed near Pulwama while they attacked an
army cordon.

“We have painted the Kashmiri youngsters into a dangerous
corner. The only way of relieving the pressure is dialogue. Otherwise, this
will not end well”, says a senior military officer, serving in the Valley.

Tuesday, 7 February 2017

Equipment procurement
continues to be crowded out by steadily rising manpower costs

The defence allocations, presented as part
of the Union Budget on February 1, highlighted the drawbacks that plague our defence
planning. Once again, the military emerges as an over-manned, poorly equipped, early
twentieth century force; with a bloated salary bill that leaves little for
modernising a vast inventory of obsolescent equipment. The depressing surrender
of ~ Rs 7,000 crore of capital budget
underlines again our structural incapability to spend even the inadequate allocations
we lament. The discussions on the budget make it evident that the political and
strategic elite and the public remain largely oblivious to the continuing and
dangerous hollowing out of the last resort of the state.

Admittedly, there are difficulties in
analysing and comparing defence budgets. These partly stem from this
government’s laudable initiatives to simplify accounting and to bring into the
defence budget expenditures on military pensions and various defence bodies
that were earlier inexplicably excluded. Consequently, comparing the last three
defence budgets requires allocations under disparate heads to be extrapolated
and tabulated in a common format (the most recent one), so comparisons are made
on an apples-to-apples basis.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

Year

Salary
bill

Pension
bill

Total
personnel costs

(A
+ B)

Non-salary
revenue allocation

Capital
budget**

Non-personnel
allocation (D + E)

Total
allocation to service (C + F)

Share
of personnel costs

Share
of capital costs

Share
of running costs

Army

1

2014-15 (Actual)

61639

54348

115987

32216*

13246

45462

161449

72%

8%

20%

2

2015-16 Actual

65352

54116

119468

34823*

20602

55425

174893

68%

12%

20%

3

2016-17 (RE)

78298

75682

153980

36637*

23709

60346

214326

72%

11%

17%

4

2017-18 (BE)

83732

77106

160838

37295*

25176

62471

223309

72%

11%

17%

Navy^

5

2014-15 (Actual)

5779

2296

8075

7891

22269

30160

38235

21%

58%

21%

6

2015-16 (Actual)

6190

2311

8501

8802

19875

28677

37178

23%

53%

24%

7

2016-17 (RE)

8009

3489

11498

9804

19596

29400

40898

28%

48%

24%

8

2017-18 (BE)

8571

3304

11875

9923

19348

29271

41146

29%

47%

24%

IAF

9

2014-15 (Actual)

10533

3766

14299

9209

32796

42005

56304

25%

58%

17%

10

2015-16 (Actual)

11287

3774

15061

9734

31198

40932

55993

27%

56%

17%

11

2016-17 (RE)

13613

6422

20035

10204

28211

38415

58450

34%

48%

18%

12

2017-18 (BE)

14619

5296

19915

10183

33556

43739

63654

31%

53%

16%

*Excludes budget for Border Roads Organisation, but includes for
Rashtriya Rifles and National Cadet Corps

Using a methodology, where allocations
under disparate heads are extrapolated and tabulated in a common format, so
that comparisons are made on an apples-to-apples basis, the chart disaggregates
the budget allocations to the three armed services: the army, the navy and the air
force. The coming year’s allocations to the services amount to ~ Rs 328,000 crore ($ 48.82 billion), or 91 per cent of the total
defence budget of ~ Rs 359,854 crore ($ 53.56 billion). The
remaining 9 per cent, which is off the chart, includes spending on the Defence
R&D Organisation, the Ordnance Factory Board and the defence ministry ---
including the Border Roads Organisation, Coast Guard and, mystifyingly, the
Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry (JAK LI), a regular infantry group. Next
year, as part of its continuing effort towards defence budget transparency, the
government could consider merging Coast Guard allocations as a sub-head in the
navy’s budget, and JAK LI allocations into the army’s budget.

Extrapolating current calculations
backwards, defence allocations have dwindled from 2.29 per cent of GDP
(2013-14, Actual), to 2.28 (2014-15, Actual), to 2.15 (2015-16, Actual), to
2.29 (2016-17, Revised Estimates), to a low of 2.14 per cent in the latest
budget. As a percentage of government spending, defence has remained largely
constant at 16.4 per cent (2013-14), 17.1 (2014-15), 16.4 (2015-16), 17.1
(2016-17 RE) and 16.8 per cent in the coming year.

The central problem in defence spending,
which is evident from the last three columns (H, I and J) of the chart, is the
crowding out of equipment procurement by steadily rising manpower costs. An inexorably
expanding army, rising salaries due to the Seventh Central Pay Commission (7th
CPC), and raised pensions due to One Rank, One Pension (OROP) are consuming
money at the cost of badly needed capital procurement of bulletproof jackets,
rifles, artillery, submarines, warships and fighter aircraft. In 2015-16, when
only 8 per cent of the army’s budget was buying new kit, the government boosted
the army’s capital allocations by ~ Rs 7,500
crore, following that with a ~ Rs 3,000
crore increase in 2016-17 and now ~ 1,500
crore next year. Even so, a salary and pensions bill that consumes an
eye-popping 72 per cent of the army’s overall budget, leaves no more than 11
per cent for new equipment.

Even the navy and air force, which traditionally
spent more than half their budgets on new equipment, have been pegged down by
the 7th CPC and OROP. In the coming year, the navy will spend just
47 per cent of its money on capital procurement, despite a serious shortage of
capital warships. Only the air force will spend more than half its budget on
modernisation, thanks to a Rs 5,000 crore infusion to pay for last year’s purchase
of 36 Rafale fighters. It should worry planners that an army engaged 24x7x365
on an active Line of Control, in counter-insurgency operations and in
staggeringly hostile terrain conditions, makes do with a substantially lower
modernisation budget than an air force that faces less immediate challenges.

Nor is this likely to change, going by the
14th Finance Commission recommendations that focus mainly on meeting
manpower expenses. “[Ministry of Finance] projections have provided for an
increase in defence revenue expenditure (including salaries) of 30 per cent in
2016-17 which will incorporate the [7th] Pay Commission impact, with
a stable growth rate of 20 per cent per annum in the remaining years”, says the
Commission’s report, which made recommendations on the disbursement of central
government finances from 2015-2020.

It is noteworthy that finance ministry
bureaucrats justify the inadequate capital allocations with the argument that
the military is unable to spend its allocated capital budget anyway. This is
technically correct: most years the defence ministry returns several thousand
crores of unspent capital rupees, or transfers them to the revenue head. But
the well-known reason is that finance ministry officials impose an informal
slowdown in according approvals as the year draws to a close, causing funds to
lapse, and the deficit to appear in a rosier light.

The military, the victim in this game, can
only watch helplessly since any significant expenditure requires ministry or
cabinet sanction. Individual services can sanction expenditures only up to Rs
150 crore, while the defence minister can spend Rs 500 crore; the finance minister
up to Rs 1,000 crore; and cabinet sanction is needed for any procurement larger
than that. Unclogging the system and preventing the services from being held
hostage by tortuous approvals requires the military’s financial powers to be urgently
and significantly raised. Separately, accountability must be fixed for delays
in finalising procurement proposals. Technology provides for this; radio
frequency identity tags (RFIDs), affixed to each procurement file, could
identify how much time it has spent in each office up the approvals chain ---
which routinely extends to months. For years, the defence ministry has blithely
ignored blatant violations of its own approvals timelines. This must end.

At a broader level, the military ---
especially the army --- needs to be co-opted into a concerted process of reducing
manpower to free resources for equipment acquisition. The generals must be given
ironclad assurances that manpower cost savings would be added onto the
modernisation budget. A culture of realistic long-term planning must be
promoted by providing funding assurances well into the future, so that key
planning documents, like the 15-year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan, are
anchored in financial realities rather than remaining empty wish-lists that
slip back at the end of each financial year.